The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
by demonegg
Summary: Sometimes the link between man and machine is more than either of them can bear.


I don't own FFVII. Rated for sex & some language. I might add to this storyline in the future, but for now this is complete. Thanks for reading.

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Lightning snaps across the severed sky; the birr of ions blisters the crisp purr of the engine beneath him, and he thinks he detects a subtle something burning. He counts one one-thousand, two one-thousand, three one-thousand, four; then, the angry detonation of thunder in the blue-black cloud bank looming behind him, some three or four miles away. Through the twisted, mangled buildings occulted by the dark, slivered into view only by the thin beam of his headlight, stars nod, dreaming, though not for long. The howling winds pique the nearby storm, while newspapers whip clawed streamers through the streets like some discarded echo of the day. If he were to check the time by the glow of his phone, he might see that he has just enough to make it home, though Tifa will long be asleep. Smiling he thinks of cool sheets and a warm body, and revs the engine a little higher. It grumbles achingly and he's forced to shift to a lower gear.

The rain begins its pitter-patter just as he veers a left turn onto the streets of Edge. It falls slow at first, then charges forward in furious sheets crosshatching his face and scarring across the bike; by the time he's blinked twice, it's soaked through his shirt. When he's flagged to a stop behind a road crew packing up for the night, the engine idles and makes an uncomfortable thump, as if a wild, winded heart were pulsing through the machine, choked with pressure. He wants to go around--this late, this close to home, and maybe the next street is clear?--but with the sudden population boom after Geostigma and all the new housing developments in this part of town, he doubts it. He reminds himself to talk to Reeve about better city planning: a motorcycle lane would be nice, as would fewer traffic lights, faster detours, or even the option of detours on highways that didn't end in fifty foot drops...and definitely more efficient engineers. The barricade of large greasy workers footslog along, the rain repelled from their hideous vested backs as they pick up pylons and tripod flood lights and block the only lane in the road. How do they manage to fit in the bed of the truck when they take up the entire damn street, Cloud wonders, unless they're crammed together and hauled around like sacks of concrete. The engine beneath him echoes his complaints. The WRO has been working on this section of the road forever, at least a year--so long that he never travels this way, but the storm was coming, and it was night, and he thought, why not? He's paying for his mistake now. He angles the phone out of the rain to check the time, but when he sighs, then squints behind him with a hand over his eyes to shield them from the rain, all he sees are more barricades and more and more WRO trucks. Another sigh. The men before him have no intention of hustling the next five, or fifty, or five thousand yards; so Cloud crabwalks Fenrir to the ruined sidewalk, which is nothing more than a sloshy, gravelly mess by now, and slowly trudges through it, hoping the tires don't get stuck. Not enough base material here, Barret would complain, the soil's no good. Barret has a fear of getting stuck in places, probably leftover from all his work as a miner, where, as Cloud understands it, cave-ins were a common fear, or that of wearing so much cave when you left that it was essentially the same thing: on the skin, hair, in the lungs, until you were entombed and dead and all veins were ore. Or maybe it came from watching the plate collapse on his teammates of how many years; or digging through the rubble and ruin of Midgar to build the new bar, while wondering if the ash you sifted through was someone you knew or someone you didn't --not that he was much help with one good arm. Barret doesn't act like he's afraid, though. He simply lectures Cloud or whoever's unfortunate enough to be nearby about the coulda-woulda-shouldas, and the real shitty job most ev'ryone else is doin' (which, Cloud figures, translates to: You fuck up what you got with Teef, Strife, and your ass is grass). Cloud nods. He understands.

Late at night when they're in bed and finally, finally alone, Tifa often whispers that Barret wouldn't know what to do if he weren't blustering about something; Cloud, in his own expected way, doesn't say much in response but he thinks that sounds about right. She must know this because she smiles and tweaks one of the spikes of his hair. She'll do it again, even as his vision narrows and he scowls--playfully, as jokingly as Cloud Strife is able to manage--and will keep at it until he has no choice but to kiss her senseless. Then those same beautiful, demanding fingers tunnel through those same stubborn, free-falling spikes to dig at the back of his scalp, and she pulls him closer. He grunts at the impact of his body upon hers and she gasps when his tongue pushes through to her mouth and the shirt rides up on her stomach and he's left wondering why she's even wearing clothes at all. Useless, he thinks, feathering the lace edge of her shirt against her skin. She squirms beneath him, and battles his tongue for some semblance of control. His fingers edge higher and higher, pushing her limit until the kiss breaks and she pulls him facedown to her chest.

Somewhere around heart level, before he's even gotten to the good part, he blinks, finds himself at the crumbled edge of concrete where he can no longer see the road crew, and he realizes that he should've cut the engine a long time ago, and would've, had he been paying attention. There's mud clogging the radiator, and he's been crawling at tonberry speeds for too long now, so long that rain hisses off the sides of the bike which boils hot enough even in the low atmosphere storm. The engine makes a strange thunka-thunka-whir noise and it panics him a little that he could be so stupid. Forcing the front tire back onto solid pavement, he pulls under the leaky awning of a fruit vendor's stand and turns the ignition off. He grimaces when water pools out the exhaust pipe, and the kickstand sinks an inch or two into a puddle.

Through lightning flashes he watches as the storm battles the buildings. It lashes water onto his face, but he makes no effort to wipe it off. He stands, arms crossed, one knee bent, back supported by the gray brick storefront. Then he realizes just how useless it is. He's getting wet anyway, he might as well walk the bike home. The kickstand splatters mud against him as it lifts, and he cringes, hoping Tifa won't look at him too long with that one eyebrow lifted. Not that she doesn't clean dirt and oil and monster guts from his clothes on a regular basis, but he knows it must be tiring, living with someone that requires so much repair. Cloud smiles because he thinks she would smile too if she could hear him now, or whack him on the arm for something they've been over before a long time ago. That's right, she would say, touching his cheek, no more living in the past; and then she'd kiss him.

He hugs the curb with the bike and slowly makes his way home. When he steps over a puddle, he remembers the rainy day in the church and how everyone was all smiles. The others were grinning and splashing about like kids, but Tifa held back and smiled _her_ smile. The one that she smiles just for him, when she understands him or when she welcomes him home. He hadn't seen that smile in weeks and then it was there, back like she'd been waiting for the chance to show it off, and he smiled too.

That had been a good day.

It was only later that night that the apologies came, after he saw that she had kept his office unchanged. The sheets were still rumpled from his last sleep there, and he sank onto the small cot. He knew she never liked to let bedding get stale, especially here in this room in case guests arrived or Barret showed up for the weekend. Maybe she left it for him. Or maybe she'd left it because he'd left her with too much to do. The guilt was like a bad habit, waiting on the edge of his consciousness for another drop, but he was a different man now, so he strode into their bedroom where she was sitting before her vanity mirror brushing out her long brown hair, and her eyes grew wide as she said, "Cloud, what're you---" and then he sank to his knees and wrapped his arms around her torso and just held her. He pressed his face into her back and he could feel her shudder with the effort not to cry. When the first escaped, he held her tighter, rocked her slowly into him. She sputtered and gasped and hiccupped into silence, and when he lifted his face and she pulled her thumbs down his cheeks, there was something of an 'I love you' in the motion and he kissed her hard, all promises and apologies and thank-yous and feelings wrapped up in that single desperate action. He didn't say much that night, he would never be a man of many words, but his arms never let her go.

He doesn't realize his pace has slowed down until one of the streetlamps pops on above him, hours too late. By now he doesn't care; he figures he has about five more minutes of walking in this damn rain before it's safe to ride Fenrir, and from there it'll be another few minutes home. He's so close he can almost taste it, a melted sweet hot on his skin. Then there's the way she smells like cotton and fresh air and something that's supposed to remind him of the ocean when she wakes in the morning. It doesn't really smell like that, but it's nice and he likes the way it crashes over his senses when she leans over him to kiss him Hello/Goodbye/See you tonight. Sometimes he pulls her into the shower when he rolls out of bed just so that scent will crest over him and sweep through his memory during the day. It's the innocuous symbol of hands on her waist, a body slicked against the tile, and undulating hips that move and press until her head hits the wall and she's biting her lip with the effort to keep the noise from waking the kids, and he's focusing on the grip of her nails on his back just to hold out a little longer, a little longer until the water runs cold and they're both left shivering from exertion.

Those are the days when he shoots out the door with his hair still wet and he has to drive a little faster for his first few deliveries. A few customers give him the once over with raised eyebrows, but he ignores them and tersely tells them to sign the slip, _please. _Gritted teeth, the confirmation of receipt, and payment required at time of placement.

This rain, though, this is getting ridiculous. Wet and soaked to the bone, he's not even sure what the point of wearing shoes is when his feet slosh around inside them. When he reaches the corner ten blocks from home, he decides the engine has cooled long enough, and after checking the fins and grills for compacted mud and sludge, he slings one leg over the pillion and rockets forth into the night. The engine gives a quiet roar, and there's an undeniable wave of relief when the sputtering stops. He speeds more than he should in the rain, in the dark, in the night, but with a quiet 'Let's go, Fenrir' the man melds with the machine, both heeding instincts beyond their control, and right now all he wants is to get home.

_Home_. He never paid it much attention as a kid, spending far too much time cooped up in his room as it was, watching and waiting and wishing he was stronger. But he's always liked the sound of that word, even later on when he wasn't sure he had one. It sort of hums on his tongue when he says it, and there's something nice and familiar about that too.

When he finally pulls up in front of the bar, he dismounts and tugs up the garage door. He keeps telling Tifa that one of these days he'll get around to automating it but he hasn't done it yet. It's been what?--four, five months already. He frowns; his promises should be better than that. Wheeling the bike into the center of the garage and dropping the kickstand, he vows to fix it tomorrow. A sudden burst of wind pounds at the exposed folds of the door, and rain steals into the garage. He hurriedly yanks down the door and stares at the mess before him. Fenrir will have to be washed and detailed and the engine will also need to be checked. Maybe he'll even call Cid up about that new stabilizer he's been raving about. One of those things that's supposed to dampen sharp movements and give him better control, especially when he's loaded down with packages.

With a green shirt tugged from the basket--Denzel's, he thinks, and dirty (she'll never know the difference)--he runs the soft cotton in quick, smooth circular strokes along the body of the bike. It's waxed and well-maintained but there are certain things you don't leave to wear and tear. But there's something about the way his hand moves over the fender that reminds him of the way she moves with her hands and mouth over his skin, and he thinks he must have some sort of problem the way his thoughts are going tonight--although maybe he finally understands why she'll find an excuse to stay and watch the washing machine when he's holed up fixing Fenrir and she has to bend over and dig through the basket to find that missing sock and holds it up in triumph for him to see when she catches him staring and he nods and says nothing but she knows anyway and he comes up behind her and she barely has enough time to close the lid before he sets her atop it and with his mouth on hers, starts feeling his way up her thigh. Suddenly, cleaning the bike when she can't see doesn't seem like such a good idea. In truth it's a really fucking stupid one. He decides to call it a night.

He can barely concentrate when he peels off his shirt and drops it in the hamper. He's too busy thinking about the way she curls one leg up towards her stomach and extends one searching arm when he's not sleeping next to her. She never did it when they were trekking all over the world, until that one night by the Highwind and he was trying so damn hard not to be a coward (_hell,_ just tell the girl you love her already), and he'd pulled her to a soft patch of grass because everything else was just so far away and he couldn't wait that long to say what it was he needed to say with words/no words. Maybe it was the end of the world that had made them so brave and thrumming with adrenaline when they didn't know what they were doing but following instincts, but he remembers she curled her leg up around his hip to pull him closer. He'd run his hand down her thigh and god she'd felt so good.

The boots follow, set next to the door where everyone can see them when they wake up in the morning. He likes the way, when he comes home now, her foot arches against her calf and her hips blindingly seek his before she's even awake. Next he tosses the socks, and in his mind there's a woolen hum of his name and 'You're home', before the pants slosh to the ground and he thinks that no matter what, they always end up that way. The boxers he leaves on for just a little bit (and it's annoying, goddamn annoying) as he fishes through the cabinet for a clean towel and runs it through his hair. He needs a shower, but this way he won't drip all over the floor. He finishes undressing, then folds the towel around his waist and heads into the bar.

A note sits on the counter about food in the fridge and a call from whomever about whatever for tomorrow and she ends it with 'Love,'. She doesn't sign her name anymore because there's only one option and there's only ever been one option and she's in too much a hurry to get to bed so he'll come home sooner so she doesn't sign her name; or so he thinks.

The sudden blast from the AC vent sends shivers through him.

He's pretty much naked here and he steps through the bar a little faster. The stairs he takes two at a time. Maybe they creak and maybe they don't, he's practically running up them. But quiet, quiet, the kids are sleeping.

The door to their room--the one he shares with her--is cracked open the way it always is whenever she goes to bed before he gets home. It's her unconscious way of welcoming him back and making sure he always knows where he belongs. There's the bathroom with a hot shower at the end of the hall that his brain tells him is a good idea, but the rest of him tells his brain to shut up because showers are obviously a much better idea later. The morning even. He smirks as he thinks it'll give them something to do to start out a very busy day. But right now he pushes open the bedroom door. He's oiled it so that it doesn't creak and she doesn't wake when he enters. Lying on her stomach, her face half-buried in the pillow. Gaia, he loves this woman. The door closes, locks, and the towel drops.

He pulls the covers aside and slips between them, seeking heat between their cool comfort. He nuzzles her shoulder and she stirs. The leg pushes higher and he tickles the bottom of her foot. She giggles when he kisses the side of her neck and doesn't give her time to protest when his lips move to hers and she's pulled astride his stomach.

Good morning, she whispers.

He grunts in response and kisses her harder.

She understands that there is no time for talk and kisses him back. It doesn't matter that words, somehow, would escape her anyway. Somewhere on her lips are syllables. Nonsense, nonsense, a giggle and his name. His tongue follows the vein down her neck. Almost with a life of its own it traces the collarbone. His fingers protest that again she's wearing too much and they slyly work their way upward. She catches on and helps them out. Their mouths break and the shirt hits the door and the towel lies somewhere over there too. Who cares who threw what where.

Her hair falls and he rides some wave and pushes up a little so she feels it too. She rolls back and he knows she's right there with him. Her fingernails scratch down his chest. He palms her thighs, lace here too, and he growls. She smiles as if challenging him to do something about it and his eyes glint and a smirk steals across his face. One snap and that lace would be history, but she pushes his hand away, braces her weight against his shoulder. Two thumbs, one hers, one his, hook inside and shimmy it down to mid-thigh. Then her hands rest behind her back, near his knees and her legs angle up and she's slick against his stomach and open and waiting as he pulls away the rest of her clothing. A heavy lidded gaze asks him what he's waiting for, he's been idling too long. He returns the look. She doesn't know what she's asking for but he'll give it to her anyway. His fingers find home and sink in. Her breath hitches, eyes close, and she throws back her head.

And god god god, does he adore this woman. Rolling her hips around his fingers and her breath leaving in wavering, aching exhales. She arches her back further towards his feet and pushes herself deeper into his hand, his thumb, his hips. He broadsides that mounded point that peeks out near the front of her. Scrapes the pad of his thumb against it. The trembling will come soon. The tremors. And his other hand braces her hard on that fleshy area between her hip bones and when she comes she comes arching and shuddering, while he pulses his thumb on that throbbing spot without ever breaking contact. She bites her lip to keep from crying out, but the contractions of her throat bandy about that unspent scream, and it vibrates out through her lips in a moan.

He doesn't let her catch her breath before his hands find her neck, the back of her head and yank her down for a kiss. Ocean, he smells the ocean on her and he lets the scent toss him about and buoy him over into a place where there are no thoughts. Just rhythm and life, like the way Tifa used to look and play when she'd be immersed in a song. But his rhythm now is both subtler and stronger: less water and music, more air and metal. He tamps the ache to follow her cue. But she's gotten restless and that leg is climbing again and he knows she won't let him last long.

So he perches her atop him, head to point, and when she sinks he doesn't know who's lost control. Those hips are swerving and slipping and raising; and pounding, clenching, grinding. Bodies faulted and maybe they always will be but it only makes the quake so much stronger when they move together. There's irony misplaced in the gentle friction, pressed between the soft billows and the rocking torrent, but only because this fits and they belong.

At first he's still coherent enough to move halfway slow. But his hips drive into that point of pressure on her body, something like throwing the throttle open wide with all the circling and shifting and clamping down on a clutch held tight. Rough, gentle, maybe a little of both, his legs, his hips ride higher and higher. He sinks lower for momentum then pistons with all he's got. His head is swimming from all the blood. But he pushes for deeper and more because he knows there's an elusive gate to infinity if he keeps going this way that'll explode into energy and form and the energy of form and maybe it's that same thing that he'd been searching forever for that some people call atonement. Or at-one-ment, he doesn't know.

But she does and clamors for faster and harder because they're there, right there, and can't he see it? they're right there. And oh god, hurry up. Please, Cloud, please. All past and future in the now, Now, Now! And stay with me, stay with me. But he's always been with her even before she knew it and her muscles are tensing and the tendons cording and she keeps climbing them higher and higher until he pushes her once more and she bursts.

She jerks the release out of him, while she stiffens and holds, and he rides out the peak. Then they collapse and fall, but not too far with the mattress concave around them and the pillows and blankets promenading to the floor.

They breathe.

And when they breathe again, and again, the sound is close to steady only after he finally kisses her. When he tosses the blankets over where she's settled, right where he left her fallen with her head on his shoulder and her hand on his heart, tracing patterns and promises, he brings the knees straddling him up a little higher and presses a kiss first to one, and then the other. Finally he rolls her off him and curls his knees against hers and her back to his chest.

At this point Tifa's too exhausted to do anything but sigh and whisper her standard, slumberous three-word goodnight. If it's a cliché or something real couples don't do every day, she doesn't care.

He knows she'll never let him go to bed without hearing it, just as she knows, even after they both fall asleep, that the smile will never leave his face.

XXXXXXXXXX

The morning sun rises quiet as usual with the normal chirping and wheeling about on the streets, while the kids still snore in their beds. On such a lazy Saturday, Tifa doesn't think it out of the ordinary when he pulls her into the shower. She even ignores the dirt running off his legs and down the drain, forgets that spot of oil near his arm, and doesn't dare think about her brand new light blue sheets. There is a bar of soap in there, somewhere, but it gets lost in the tussle, as her hands are too busy pushing the suds down his chest, while the dark look he sends her makes her shiver and he crowds closer.

"Cold?" he mumbles.

She shakes her head no, but he comes nearer anyway. She accepts his kisses and doesn't complain when they travel lower.

She pauses only when her fingers slip a little too easily along his skin. She holds them up for him to inspect: black and greasy, and he grins. She brushes one strikingly down his cheek.

He doesn't care when those fingers tangle in his hair. It'll wash off in the shower and at the moment he's too preoccupied with her lips.

She pauses yet again when the kiss slips and she's forced to blink. On the other cheek now, running down from his hair, are dark streaks, and when she turns the fingers of both her hands, they're covered in something that looks like greasy soot.

"Cloud..." she starts, then frowns when he only smiles and wipes off a black half-moustache angling for the corner of her lips. She refuses to be distracted, though, by his persistent kisses or that sneaky thumb that's circling her breast.

She pulls back and levels a stern look at him, after, of course, flipping the wet bangs out of her eyes.

"What happened last night?" It's unlike him to arrive home well after midnight, and it's even more unusual for him to keep her up until all hours of the morning when there's a problem with Fenrir. He never lets it sit in disrepair--or broken, she muses, puzzling over the oil on his face and arm. Especially when he has the time and energy--as he obviously did last night, he almost always takes care of it first before giving in to sleep. As long as he doesn't wear himself out, she can't begrudge him that. It's part of their livelihood, his constant companion, and in so many ways, his freedom. Anyone in her position, Tifa thinks, would understand.

Silent, Cloud watches the confusion play over her face as she broods over her question, and his eyes glint when her bewilderment deepens as he braces his forearms on the tiles at either side of her head. "Internal combustion problem," he shrugs, a move not lost even in his current fixed position.

She can't help skittering glances between _that_ look on his face and that spot on his arm. "With Fenrir?" she asks.

In front of her-- bare, rested, and if you ask him, with all the time in the world--he doesn't bother hiding the smirk.

Other than that, his expression and voice are entirely unchanged.

"Yeah," he says, "overheated." His eyes bore into hers something wicked. "I was distracted--

"Almost blew a gasket."


End file.
